Christmas

Today I am thankful for Christmas.

I just wanted to start by wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas. I am so thankful to be able to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  I use to not really be a big fan of Christmas because I feel it has become far to commercialized and people are not remembering the true reason for this season.  Jeremiah and I have tried to teach the kids why we celebrate Christmas and that it is not about the gifts we get, but rather the gifts, or better yet the service we can give others. They are still young and learning and yes we still hold the fun traditions of some gifts and stockings. Jeremiah shares the story of the birth of Christ first keeping the focus on him, then we have followed a tradition from Jeremiah's family where we open presents on Christmas Eve, and all of the presents are from mom and dad. Christmas morning they get their stockings filled with goodies and such and this is what comes from Santa.  This is our family tradition, what are some of your favorite traditions you do in your home?

Today I thought I would change things up a bit and craft a Christmas card.  I didn't want the standard red and greens so I when with black, red, white and some silver.  I used white embossing powder to really give the pop I wanted on both the red and the black card-stock.  I used stamps from the Holiday Wishes set.  I really love how this turned out.  I added some silver embossing powder with my white on the little snowflakes and tied a sliver ribbon around the card to mesh the red and black better without having a bold line.  I added some black dew drops from The Robin's Nest for the final touch this card needed.

Here is a closer look at the embossed snowflakes, ribbon bow and dew drops.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas with family, friends and loved ones, stay safe!

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

Outing to Old Colorado Territory Days..

Today I am grateful for the fun family outing we had last summer with all of the boys to the Territory Days in old town Colorado.

Jeremiah decided it would be fun to have the old fashioned pictures taken while we were there.  The boys loved getting to hold the guns and be dressed up like cowboys.  They all looked so cute too, even little Weston who was just three months old was all decked out like a little stud.  They were all so good and we really got some great shots.  I have had these pictures hanging around my room where I can see them because I have loved them so much and I was so happy to finally put them into a scrapbook.

This one made me laugh so hard when we first saw it, everyone was in perfect character pointing their guns at daddy, and looking at him too.  I used the striped side of the Cowboy paper from The Robin's Nest.  I used some brown mailbox letters for my words.  I stamped and embossed the scallops, stars, and paisleys with the Wanted stamp set and a copper emboss powder from Stampin; Up!.

Just a little close up of the embossed scallop circles.

Again I used the mailbox letters, and this page shows off my embossed paisleys. I placed these on the page with foam pop ups to give the page just a little more dimension.  

We could not have asked for a more perfect picture, everyone is actually looking at the camera, eyes are open and smiles all around!!

  I know we all really enjoyed taking these pictures and they whole day just being together.

I love having pictures of the fun memories we have made together as a family and love to be able to scrapbook them and share it with others.

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

Joseph Smith

Today I am thankful for the first prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joseph Smith.

I am grateful for Joseph Smith for having the faith to do the things he did to restore the fullness of the church to the earth today.  I have a testimony that he saw God the father and his son Jesus Christ at the young age of 14, when he prayed to know which church to join.   I am truly grateful for this because the gospel and being part of the church brings a happiness to my life that nothing else in the world could ever do.

Not sure if you can read the journaling I did here with this picture, but it explains where this came from.  This is an actual photo hanging in mom and dad O'Crowley's spare bedroom. This is Jeremiahs favorite photo of Joseph Smith and in person it is quite a neat one to see.  It felt fitting to use it for this page.  I used The Robin's Nest paper called Service.  The words printed on this paper were perfect to describe Joseph, patience, service and brotherly love.  

I found this picture of Joseph and his wife Emma Smith and thought it was perfect to add to the page.  I added some dew drops to embellish and it added the perfect bit of elegance I wanted.

The bottom left is a picture of a statue of Joseph that I believe is at Temple Square.  It is a beautiful representation of the Prophet and really looked good with the other two photos I had chosen.  

I was grateful to be able to post this today as it is not only my dear handsome husband and his twin Jessiciah's birthdays but it is also Joseph Smiths birthday as well. 

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

Braxton's Art...

Today I am grateful for Braxton's Artwork!!

I just love all the artwork this little Braxton does.  He seems to be drawing pictures daily now.  I wish I had saved more of all of the boys artwork, nothing can replace those first innocent creations.  You know the ones where are are at least 10 times thinner or 10 times fatter than you really are, and they somehow manage to point out all the best features they see in you. *wink-wink*

These pages were so fun to preserve some of his art.  I went "loud" on these because anyone who knows Brax knows he is LOUD.  So this worked perfect.  I really wanted to highlight the art so I left things with a little less detail than I normally would have, but it looks good and keeps the focus on the awesome drawn picture.

Here is the original picture, this seriously makes me smile so big every time I look at it.  I asked Braxton to tell me about this picture and he says this is our whole family....I love how much he loves his family and really loves to draw them out, especially his brothers. I thought for sure I was the red peanut looking one with the belly button, but he just laughed and said, "no silly that's dad, I gave him a belly button. You are the one with the hair."  (The purple fuzzy looking one to the left of the peanut...I mean dad)

For the other page I kept things fairly simple and just added a few pictures of him coloring and painting on one of our school days here at home. I added some smaller sticker circles in various circles and like what it did for this page.  I also added number stickers under the bottom pictures.  I used my cricut to cute out the letters in the same polka dot print to really tie it all together.  I sure love this four year old and I cherish his sweet creations!!

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

More functional and usable space..

Today I am grateful for more functional and usable space.

The left page is the cubby space and closet in our master bedroom when we bought our house last year.  We have since painted the room a beautiful midnight blue with white trim, as you can see in the pictures on the right page.

It only took one look at this wasted space, for Jeremiah to say he was going to open it all up and put some shelves in.  That is just what he did last summer.  We wanted to make the space really feel like a part of the room and so we carried the colors over into the bookcase area and it really looks like it has always been there.  He gave the shelves a beautiful curve instead of just a plain straight across.  We have so many books and various decorations and items from places of travel.  It is so nice to have all this space to store and display so many of the things we love.

For this layout I used just some nice textured blue card-stock. Lined my pictures with a red.  For the before page I used a lot of rub-ons and a few dew drops for some dimension. 

Here is a close up of the bookshelf. We hung some rope lights around the inside where they can not been seen and have them on a timer so they light up the room very well in the evening hours.  

I really struggled at first scrapbooking these pictures.  The colors in the before pictures are just awful and they aren't exactly exciting.  I ended up really liking them when all was done and said but it sure took some creativity for me to be happy and feel like they were actually complete.  I used a journaling tag from The Robin's Nest and made a darling clothes line with items hanging from it, I kept laughing at this cause I just thought it was so dang cute!

As for the closet, we took off the bulky doors.  When they were open they hit the bedroom door so we decided to just take them off.  Shortly before Jeremiah left for his deployment he finished the closet.  I swear we have become pros at figuring out how to get more functionality and usability out of small spaces, and this was no exception!  He built these great square boxes in the top part of the closet that have fabric boxes in them, this allows for storage of the smaller clothing items or things that are worn less often. At the bottom where there was so much space that seemed wasted he built a couple more boxes and shoes racks.  You can see that he left a section on the far left so that my dresses still hang nicely without getting bunched up.  

All in all both of these projects turned out very well, I have plenty of space for just about everything!

Happy Crafting, 

Tara